Abstract

In dimensions two and higher, wavelets can efficiently represent only a small range of the full diversity of interesting behavior. In effect, wavelets are welladapted for pointlike phenomena, whereas in dimensions greater than one, interesting phenomena can be organized along lines, hyperplanes, and other nonpointlike structures, for which wavelets are poorly adapted. We discuss in this paper a new subject, ridgelet analysis, which can effectively deal with linelike phenomena in dimension 2, planelike phenomena in dimension 3 and so on. It encompasses a collection of tools which all begin from the idea of analysis by ridge functions ψ(u1x1+...+unxn) whose ridge profiles ψ are wavelets, or alternatively from performing a wavelet analysis in the Radon domain. The paper reviews recent work on the continuous ridgelet transform (CRT), ridgelet frames, ridgelet orthonormal bases, ridgelets and edges and describes a new notion of smoothness naturally attached to this new representation.

Citations